Generally, the occurrence of fog at the airport may frequently cause the cancellation of the aircraft flights. It causes delayed departure of passengers and air cargo transports, leading to inefficiency of the work. Further, it causes delayed arrival of aircraft, thus leading to vast economic loss, such as aircraft fuel consumption due to a circular flight over the airport. Also, the aircrafts may be exposed to danger due to poor visibility. Thus, the occurrence of fog at the airport causes the above and other various problems.
To solve the above mentioned problems, there have recently been proposed apparatuses or methods for preventing the frequent occurrence of fog at a runway and for removing the fog having occurred. The examples can be found in Korean patent application No. 10-2001-0041660, entitled “System for removing fog” and Korean utility model application No. 20-2001-0014033, entitled “Apparatus for preventing and removing fog at a runway using compressed air”.
The former invention removes fog by evaporating nitrogen and oxygen liquids over a fog area to separate moisture contained in the fog, and simultaneously, by spraying dried and hot nitrogen and oxygen gases through nozzles towards the fog area to remove the above moisture. The latter invention has an air compression chamber around a runway, from which compressed air is sprayed through a vertical discharging pipe installed around the runway, which causes a turbulent flow used to remove the fog.